meizzwang

Sorry to hear about your Dwarf Cavendish P stem dying back, I feel your pain most years

Definitely, I'm going to put all the potted banana plants into the ground this year as soon as the day temperatures warm up consistently to 70F or above. In a pot, you can get the roots to warm up better than in the ground, so on sunny days, even if the air temperature is relatively cold, the soil temperature goes past 70F and we still get some growth. In the ground, the soil stays cold because it's a much larger volume to heat up, so this is the reasoning behind keeping them potted for the time being.

bananza

Why do people simply seek out a cold hardy banana for weather? Do cold hardy tste better than others? If not, then why not get one that does? THe thing is, plants can acclimate and evolve to withstand the environemtn with human assistance. Its called evolution. SOrry but its the fact Im tired of seeing cold hardy ornamentals in my nurseries when I want a good tasting fruit plant

beam2050

love to be able to grow bing cherries down here. flathead lake in my home state Montana has the best. but you cannot grow figs or bananas there either. whats a mother to do.

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npk of wood ash 0/1/3 to 0/3/7

npk of banana leaf ash 1.75/0.75/0.5

bananza

But you can try to grow a tropicl and see what happens. Just put a tower of mulch around it in winter

André Troylilas

It's not that easy.

beam2050

that's right. now you take zones for instance, I am 9a by the map but I am about 30 miles [as the crow fly's] and 15 miles from the st. johns river which is bloody huge. so after over 20 years of fishing just north of tampa, which is 9b, I know that my weather in the winter time is almost exactly the same as tampa. now you go 20 miles west of me the temps drop dramaticly. and some bananas will not do well in tampa, or survive at all. but will do very will in Hawaii.

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npk of wood ash 0/1/3 to 0/3/7

npk of banana leaf ash 1.75/0.75/0.5

Vette-kid

In still new, but add I see it, most bananas will not survive long enough to fruit under cold conditions. Yes, the corm may survive with precautions, but if you want fruit you have to get a plant through a winter. Unless you use a short cycle plant. So for people in zone 8/9 or less you need either a short cycle or a cold hardy variety in order to get fruit without extreme measures (greenhouse, pots indoors over winter, heat tape, etc)

beam2050

yes, then add in the fact that you can darn near throw a rock into the gulf, you should have better results than people who live near straight east of you. the ones that live inland like perry and lake city alltho they also share the zone of 9b. their winters will normally be much colder than yours.

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npk of wood ash 0/1/3 to 0/3/7

npk of banana leaf ash 1.75/0.75/0.5

edwmax

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luisport

This winter was just terrible. Our lowest temp record falled to -6.5C from -3C! I lost some trees but only 3 banana plants. I just lost 1 dwarf cavendish, 1 dwarf red and the lacatan. The other banana trees are growing well! I will get more trees soon!

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Musa Rajapuri, D. Brazilian, D. Orinoco, Blue Java, Pisang Ceylon, Robusta, S. D. Cavendish, Da Jiao (Himalayan Fruit), D. Goldfinger, x Fruit, Himalayan Mountain, Williams

Mango Glenn, Red Ivory

Avocado Bacon, Stewart, Sir Prize, Ettinger, Pinkerton, Duke

Paw Paw Sunflower, Prima 1216, Potomac, KSU Atwood, Mango, Jerry's Big Girl, Al Horns, KSU Chapell

https://growingfruit.org/t/my-small-...-orchard/19936

meizzwang

Here's my unofficial results from last winter, in order of most cold hardy to least. Please note, this is based on a very limited number of cultivars. Plants were judged by the amount of damage to the leaves/p-stem after the cool weather has passed. These results are preliminary findings and may change next year because some plants like the dwarf brazilian, for example, were relatively short and were fully protected by a cement wall. Once it gets taller and is no longer protected by the wall, that will be the true test:
1) Dwarf Brazilian
2) rajapuri
3) Ice cream
4) American Goldfinger
5) Williams and Dwarf Cavendish

Williams and Dwarf Cavendish are on the chopping block. Williams reached flowering size and had 3 large p-stems on the mat, but zero leaves from last summer's growth made it through temporarily light frost. While other cold hardy varieties have already produced several new leaves this year, Williams hasn't produced any new leaves on the main P-stems (many side shoots have emerged though). There's no flower bud in sight and it's getting too late to have fruit mature before the next winter months, so for this reason, it's deemed unsuitable for my climate. You have to get lucky and have a very mild winter with no frost to get this one to fruit up here, but that rarely happens.

On the other hand, I have an Aeae that has produced 3 sets of leaves so far this year and is growing well like the other cold hardy bananas. However, it was covered under greenhouse plastic this past winter, so I can't say it's more cold hardy than williams just yet. This year, it'll be too tall to cover, so we'll see if it stands up to the elements. Even if it gives me trouble with fruiting up here, it'll be kept because of those amazingly beautiful variegated leaves.

Below are either new acquisitions or plants that spent the winter under greenhouse plastic. These will all be put to the test this coming winter:
1) pisang raja
2) dwarf orinoco
3) pisang ceylon
4) FHIA-18
5) namwah
6) SH-3640 (notes: I have a hunch this might be less cold hardy than reported. It's taken more than a month for a super healthy sword pup with roots to produce its first leaf. American goldfinger pups with roots and a rootless namwah, on the other hand, produced their first leaves in the exact same conditions 3 weeks after being separated from the mat. It has been abnormally cold overall this spring, but some varieties still grow pretty fast while others languish).

edwmax

This is June, has the pstem choked? There should be some leaves by this time unless the corm has died. But you stated there are several new pups. ???

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meizzwang

I'm not sure what happened to the Williams, but instead of seeing a normal cigar leaf emerge from the top, there's a shredded up leaf that's partially brown. Perhaps it has choked as you have alluded to and the new leaves are all backed up somewhere in the P-stem. There are new pups that have 2-3 leaves growing normally, but this is it, the plant is going to be replaced by SH-3640. I'm dreading digging it up, the corms are massive and the base of the p-stems appear to be more than 1' in diameter.

edwmax

Since you are going to replace the plant anyway, cut the pstem to the center stem vertically from the top to locate the choke or cut the pstem off in short sections. Also, there may be a noticeable bulge at the choke. The plant might be ready to fruit.

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sputinc7

I have seen that before and for your sake I hope I am wrong. The PS slowly rots down and stops growing from the main growth point while putting all it's energy into water suckers. Peel off all dead material after cutting it about 3-4 inches down. Try a neem oil spray or something stronger for fungus...

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If you lose your head and give up, you neither live nor win.

https://sputinc7.wixsite.com/covwc

Varieties I supposedly bought: Manzano, Cavendish, Blue Java, Sweetheart, and Gros Michel.
What it seems I actually have: Brazilian, Cavendish, Namwah, Dwarf Red, Gros Michel, Pisang Ceylon, Veinte Cohol and SH 3640, and American Goldfinger. FHIA 1, Paggi and FHIA 17... Always room for one more.

cincinnana

Metamucil fellas .....
This one was not doing anything last month.....so I had cut it horizontally, but after it stopped pushing I cut the stem vertically to show the choke

Untitled

by
Hostafarian, on Flickr

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Untitled by
Hostafarian,
on Flickr

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edwmax

@ Cinci

Thanks for the above photo. It appears to explain a lot.

It looks like that choke also caused an interior fungus to grow from the rotting stem. ... So after cutting the pstem vertically, did the pstem/fungus dry out and allow the center stem to grow?

I've had 3 plants that died this way. So now instead of slowly cutting the pstem shorter as it dies, I will try cutting the pstem vertically in hopes of killing the fungus while allowing the center stem to grow.

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cincinnana

I cut the plant vertically just for the photo....I wanted to see what was going on in there and get a picture of it.
Just for you all!!

After the the photo was taken I cut the stem horizontally about 4 inches below the necrotic tissue of the stem /choke.
The brown material in the stem is dead plant tissue and not a fungus.

I would continue to cut the stem as you have always have just make a shorter aggressive cut.

The plant will be little shorter now

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edwmax

Thanks for the picture. Locating and removing the choke may be the only way to save the pstem and eliminate other associated problems where this type of problem occurs. Of course, the corm is pupping so the there is not a total loss of the plant.

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meizzwang

Here's the growth point of my williams, photos taken 6/7/17:


It's a jumbled mess with no flower bud in sight. Even if it did flower, there's barely any leaves to get the fingers to fatten up. Last year before the cold weather, it had GINORMOUS, healthy leaves that were bigger than any of the other varieties:


Literally, no new leaves have emerged since October of last year, one reason why this Williams plant is getting chopped:



Williams in the middle of the photo. Many new healthy plantlets are growing and getting big pretty quick, but I'm done with this plant, it just can't take prolong cold like the others can. If I grow out them out, they'll likely end up leafless and choking just like the main p-stems. The only chance of getting them to fruit is if we have an abnormally warm winter like in 2015-2016, it didn't freeze and we had temps in the 80's in February:



as mentioned earlier, my aeae has been growing strong, although it was covered and protected during the winter. It's probably equally or less cold hardy than Williams if I had to guess:



The aeae hasn't shot out a variegated leaf for a very long time, this is the first one in a while, and it's barely variegated. This is likely environmental and pH related: